A Game of Cards at the Edge of the World
by Thalius
Summary: It's vivid and sharp, so clear that he wonders if perhaps he's dead instead of dreaming, and Hell is a bar with Andal and no deck of cards with which to clean his friend's pockets. Could be worse, he supposes.


Meant to be an alternate take on the "Last Call" trailer Bungie released a few days ago for Destiny 2, with slightly more feels added.

* * *

The Crypt is always waiting for him, even when he doesn't want to go down there. Even when he thinks he can't survive another trip that far back.

He's down deep tonight, into the guts of a ship. Fallen, House Devils. Vandals claw at the walls, racing towards him. Cayde draws his gun. He thinks he's seen this hallway a thousand times, but perhaps it's only been a hundred. Perhaps it's—

 _WRONG TIME / REALIGNING…_

Petrified marrow crunches beneath his boots instead, the smell of dead things long past rot permeating his olfactories. Luna, cracked earth and bleeding out Hive. It's not real— _HISTORY IS A REALITY OF TIME GONE BY—_ okay, _strike_ that, it's not an imminent _threat_ , but he can still feel the Light draining from his body, weighing down his ghost beside him and reminding them both that they do not belong here. Humanity does not control the affairs of the moon any longer.

 _ARE YOU STILL A PART OF HUMANITY?_

He moves to answer, but the scene wipes, and then he's falling again—

 _WRONG PLACE / REALIGNING…_

He lands on his back, cursing the Crypt for flinging him so rudely to the ground. The air around him warps, forcing walls to move before he can understand where he is. Cayde stands, pulls up his hand cannon, and sees the source of the interference.

Of course.

Brask's ability to fuck with his head apparently extends both beyond death or consciousness. He has killed and watched others kill his friend a thousand— _SURELY A MILLION—_ times while he's here, drifting. Realigning. Wandering. But there his pack brother sits, unburdened by any immediate threat of violence.

Cayde can control his own actions for now, and decides that he does not have to kill his friend tonight. Andal is sitting at a table he's made appear in the corner of their favourite bar— _THE_ _TALKING SPINE, GOOD TIMES—_ and Cayde saunters over.

"You got your deck on you?" is how Brask greets him, a cigarillo hanging from his mouth.

"Have I ever not?"

"Dunno," he drawls, watching his friend sit down. "We're in a weird little corner of your head tonight. Could be you're packing light."

His hand slips to his belt, and finds that he is indeed missing fifty-two paper cards. No extra aces, either.

"You're in charge of all this." Cayde waves his hand around the bar. It's vivid and sharp, so clear that he wonders if perhaps he's dead instead of dreaming, and Hell is a bar with Andal and no deck of cards with which to clean his friend's pockets.

Could be worse, he supposes.

Brask snorts. "I'm rosy you think highly enough of me to assume that a dead man could control a robot's dreams."

"Not dreams," Cayde corrects. "Memories."

"Don't reckon we've had a conversation of this flavour before."

"We've had a lot of dumb conversations. And we're having it now; it's a memory either way."

"Ha!" He slaps his hand on the table. "Exos and their paracausal dream states. You takin' _I think therefore I am_ to its extreme conclusions?"

Maybe it _is_ just a dream. He dreams of killing Andal, and Tevis, and Ikora and Zavala and Shiro and Holliday and— _YOUR KNIFE WILL FIND EVERYONE'S THROAT EVENTUALLY—_ and all of _that_ surely hasn't happened.

Not in this timeline, anyway. Are they from somewhere else? A slip of reality he can't access, only available for him to watch play out in horror?

"How about we just enjoy the bar instead?" Brask offers, and pulls out a deck of his own from under his heavy cloak, a mirror of Cayde's. "You can wonder after all this in the light of day."

He hums out a laugh. "Hardly. I'm too busy running the shitshow you left behind."

"You think you're actually doing any of the running?"

His optics snap to his friend. He's slung over his seat, open and easy with no hint of malice. Cayde relaxes a little. He wouldn't expect anything of the sort had Andal been alive, but talking to ghosts inside his head is— _UNPREDICTABLE AND PROBABLY VERY DANGEROUS._ He can't always glean intentions, or assume good faith. Not in here, at least.

"Doing what I can," he says cautiously. "Not shit compared to you, but most aren't."

"You're bein' awfully nice tonight." Brask rolls his stupid little cigarillo around in his fingers and raises a brow. "Making me think you got some ulterior motives."

"Idiot," he mutters, and gets up to retrieve the worn-out chips they play with, tucked in a case behind the counter. "Deal already."

Andal swipes him out his cards as the scene shifts around them. The bar is crumbling now, concrete collecting around the supports at the four corners of the building. Explosions burn in the red sky, bursting apart the impenetrable Last City. The calls of Cabal and Guardians fill the air, but it feels a hundred miles away right now. His full focus is commanded by the shit hand his friend has dealt him and the constant watch for any signs of cheating.

They get through two games before the Crypt drags him away. The scene begins to collapse, shift, fold inward. He meets Brask's eyes as the table disappears, who gives him a parting smile, and waves him off the edge of the world. He falls willingly, secure in the knowledge he'd at least see the man again, and that he just kicked his entire ass at poker.

* * *

The scene around him seems awfully familiar, and it's not until he enters the ruins of the bar that he figures out why. He's been here many times before, of course, but the crumbling state of the building tugs at other, more bizarre memories.

The seat he'd taken at the table in the Crypt is still waiting for him here now, but the one across from it is empty. The absence of cigarillo smoke and Brask's easy laugh makes the bar seem desolate and lonely— _MORE LONELY, IT'S BEEN LONELY EVER SINCE HE LEFT—_ and Cayde hops the counter to grab a bottle of absinthe verte; Andal's favourite. It just smells like piss and cut grass to him, but Brask had always been enamoured with it.

Still, pouring a cup and setting it down where his friend had sat made the building feel a little less empty, and he pulls out a deck of cards to deal hands.

"The City's fallen, just like you saw earlier," he says to no one, flicking through his cards. "Dunno how you figured it out to tell me, but you coulda done it in a less obtuse way."

His friend, long dead and body far away, does not respond. Cayde continues on. "You wanna hear the crazy shit that went down? You won't believe it, but you can't really argue with me. So, I'm in this super boring meeting, about—something, wasn't paying attention. Then _boom—"_

* * *

The wall to his left collapses, crumbling under the burden of catastrophic structural damage. Since Brask is not here to defend his tenuous position as a "decent poker player" _(HIS WORDS, NOT MINE)_ , Cayde wipes the floor with him a third time. He chuckles when he sets down his flush and promptly packs up the deck, sorting them back into their pack. "Guess you had to be there," he says fondly, eyes going to the drink, still full, resting on the table. He would have never been able to convince anyone of half the shit he said without Andal there corroborating his stories, regardless if they were actually _true_ or not, and yet again he found himself missing that kind of back up.

He gathers the chips then and puts them back in their place, as if that would preserve the integrity of the building. He lives the bottle and the glass, though. Those can stay.

"Cayde, any _day_ now." Zavala's voice is a sharp report in his ear piece, dragging him out of old memories and even older regrets. Right. City crumbling, cabal invading, general destruction raging across the Tower.

"Best get back to it, old friend," he says, unsure if his words are for the bar or for Andal. Either way, he won't see them again.

Not while he's awake, anyway.


End file.
